


The Travelling Symphony of Beleriand After

by Leeheon



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Beleriand, Gen, Post-Nirnaeth Arnoediad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-31 22:11:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12142182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leeheon/pseuds/Leeheon
Summary: After the Nirnaeth Arneodiad, a ragtag band of surviving elves wander around the North.Or; a fic about just Where Did All These People Go, with the self-indulgency level of 10/10.





	The Travelling Symphony of Beleriand After

_But seeking for Luthien in despair he wandered upon strange paths..._

 

 

 

 He wakes to the sound of dripping water. It has a certain musical cadence to it, and softly he hums along, accompanying, enlarging. And perhaps he has not woken yet, at least not fully, because he does not startle even when a hand lifts him off the ground and another presses a waterskin to his lips. The water tastes bitter, but it serves to clear his head. He opens his eyes.

 Twin points of silver light meets him. He blinks, and his sight focuses into a white face framed with dark hair, but of course it is not her and he does not quite allow himself to be disappointed. Instead he asks the expected question.

 'Who are you?', he croaks, embarrassed at the state of his voice.

 'Wanderers,' the woman answers. Another dark-haired elf, who must be her companion, shuffles into view. 'We're from Hithlum, friend.'

 

 The woman's name is Lalwen(he recognizes it, but makes no comment). She wears men's clothes and seldom laughs, but she has a smile she fondly shares. When they enter a small village he also learns that she is a healer, or has a healer's arts, and that she has been travelling ever since the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. It seems she serves as a circuit judge as well, although there's not much need for that. There aren't things to be fought over, now, when the sky is covered with dark clouds and crops wither at first rain, and apparently the people of the North stick together in hard times.

 She sings, sometimes. She has a good voice and carries a half-harp besides her bow, in the world that is Beleriand After, and he does not know how to feel about this.

 

 The man, Enerdhil, is revealed to be a smith at their next village. Villages are no more what they once were; they're wooden huts and a dirty clearing and a handful or three of elves living together, but trust the Noldor to have built an impromptu forge. Enerdhil greets the elves there warmly and gets straight to work, while Lalwen gathers news and patches up some scrapes. Later he would learn that Enerdhil is a straggler from Turgon's hidden city. He would ask why he does not return, and the answer would make him bite his tongue. Enerdhil refuses to take even the remotest chance of betraying his city, now that the Foe has eyes in every shrub and rock.

 Enerdhil does not seem unhappy. In the firelight he takes out a fiddle from his semi-magical sack. He is terribly off-key when he sings, but he fiddles well enough to avoid being mistaken for a gutted cat.

 

 They wander on.

 Somewhere on the road they pick up a dog, a young hunting hound, and Lalwen insists they keep him. She looks at Daeron, too, when she advocates the benefits of a guard-dog, and when he consents Enerdhil does, too, albeit reluctantly. Daeron isn't sure why he feels so absurdly good. Probably because now they take their night watches one by one, trusting in the dog's instincts.

 Sleep does not come easily to him, and anyways his dreams are filled with images of a dancing maiden. The situation takes a turn for the worse as Lalwen begins to call the dog Huan. It is too small and scrawny to pass for a Valinorean hound, but Lalwen claims that the new Huan looks so much like the old one they could be brothers. He does not press her for the source of that information. Enerdhil remarks that she is acting like she is thirty years old. Lalwen gives a delighted laugh.

 

 

 Five villages later, he borrows tools from Enerdhil and whittles a pipe. It has been long since he played, but his fingers remember the songs. he plays quietly, tenderly, letting loose note after note into the night air. Lalwen and Enerdhil sits up behind him. When he finishes Enerdhil says he has never met anyone before, who made music sweeter than Lord Ecthelion's. Lalwen is hugging Huan so hard her arms are barely seen beyond the dirty fur, but even Huan is bowing its head and sagging. Daeron is proud.

 He starts piping and singing for the villagers they meet. And the wanderers start playing together, harp, fiddle, and pipe, and such sound is so familiar yet foreign against the battered landcape that Daeron cries, a bit, after the first time. He is not alone in that.

 There is a quality to a trio that goes above a simple assortment of instruments, a thick serenity filling the gap between the voices. He finds that he has missed it, very much.

 

 They wander on.

 Once, they encounter Annael. He knows Lalwen, of course, but he keeps his silence like everyone else. When they are through with their usual repertoire, and when Lalwen and Enerdhil are busy doing what they usually do - though Lalwen does not impose overmuch on the Grey-elves - Annael asks Daeron for a children's song. A young boy with yellow hair is clutching Annael's leg. Daeron has not seen a child of Men before, but this one could almost be an elfling, with its wide eyes and disarming smiles.

 He traces his memory, rakes it, and tries a little ditty about puddles and rainbows. The child claps along. Daeron is surprised to see that those small hands actually have all their fingers. Fingernails, even. He sings on, painfully aware that there are songs that the child would likely never hear in his short span of life, and ends up singing throughout the night. The child, Tuor, falls asleep at the break of dawn. He wakes Annael who has dozed off several hours ago, and asks Lalwen for something to help with his throat.

 When Lalwen suggests that they make an attempt to enter Dor-Lomin, Daeron does not protest. Enerdhil sulks, but of the three of them he, perhaps, feels the debt to the House of Hador most keenly. He leaves Tuor with a clockwork Huan. He, too, had presumably forgone sleep that night.

 

 Dor-Lomin, perhaps, could be the epitome of Beleriand After. It is no longer the land that Fingolfin passed on to Hador, and from Enerdhil's expression, nor is it the land that the children of Galdor hail from. Lalwen tries her best for a few months, healing, singing, planting hopes in hearts soon to stop, but at last she turns to them, dejected.

 'We'd need an army to save these people,' she says, 'and a couple more to keep them free.'

 'So we're giving them up,' Enerdhil sounds every bit as lost as Lalwen. Huan pads over to lick his hand. Enerdhil sighs and ruffles its hair.

 Daeron cannot fathom what to say. His home is yet well, is it not? He tries in spite of that, lamely; 'We'll come back.'

 They know they won't.

 Even so, when they finally leave, it is with an addition to their ragged company. It is a child of Men, a babe named Dirhaval. Daeron has no love for Men but this one has a mother who begs them to take her son away, and does not look too much like Beren anyways.

 

 

 Years pass, and they wander on. The land slowly rots all around them, but it is still lived, it is still alive. They see more graveyards than villages now. Some they dig themselves. They sing elegies for the dead and limericks for the living until they blend into one giant requiem.

 Their wanderings take them far, over hills and dells, and one day when they have traveled farther east than is their wont, Daeron dreams not of a raven beauty but of a tall, skilled marchwarden. He walks away from the camp in a trance and sits down besides a rise on the ground. He takes out his pipe and it wails a dirge from Doriath. Daeron does not grieve, but he does. When he falls asleep he dreams again of the princess.

 

 Not long after, Nellas joins them. She does not speak and drifts in and out of their periphery, but when they play she dances. Huan weaves in between her steps nimbly despite its age, and just the idea of all this is laughable. For by now Daeron knows their stories, Lalwen and Enerdhil and Dirhaval and Nellas and yes, even Huan, and still he pipes remembering another's dance. They live in such a strange world, their dear Beleriand After.

 

 They wander on, but it cannot last, for the Black Foe's reach ever lengthens and the Northern lands have become a den of orcs. Annael's band has departed. Many others have either left or died, and the six of them dig graves and torch deserted cabins more often than not. Lalwen despises the feeling of helplessness; she hates being able to do nothing about anything, even though she is not Luthien and absolutely cannot storm Morgoth's fortress. Enerdhil misses his craft. What he finds most hard to take is how sluggish his mind moves now, in order to cope with the horrors of everyday life.

 Nellas dwindles. She has yet to say a word to anyone but Dirhaval, and she limps along, uncaring. At least no-one complains of her eating their food. Daeron is wearily relieved. And Dirhaval is a headstrong boy, enough that Daeron begins to regret taking him in. Dirhaval possibly knows it. They drift away. They all do.

 

 The final ones to join them are Elemmakil and Celebrimbor. Enerdhil weeps to hear of Gondolin's fall, but is joyed to meet his fellow Gondolindrim. And for a while all is well again. Eight(including the dog) is a fine number for travelling. Of course, the dynamics within the band grows more complicated as the two are welded in more firmly, but Daeron is so happy to be finally playing with a true musician - apparently Ecthelion taught his men seriously - that he does not quite care. And Celebrimbor is a Feanorian, true, but he talks smithcraft with Enerdhil and political theory with Lalwen, is surprisingly good at caring for an aged Huan, and even manages to befriend Dirhaval.

 Daeron learns of the end of Doriath from them. Celebrimbor looks ready to be punched, but Daeron thanks them for the news. He does not really feel the loss. He does long for Luthien. He longs for her with all the feelings he can spare, because he does not want to spare them to any other thought. Yes, he longs for her.

 

 Elemmakil is restless to rejoin his people, and verbal in expressing his desire. So it is that their threadbare company turns back south, and pass through Brethil. Few people remain in the woods, now. They are afraid of strangers, but they gather to watch and listen. Daeron pipes, Elemmakil plays on the flute, Dirhaval sings with a smile upon his lips and oh, how Nellas dances over the glade.

Then suddenly Clebrimbor gives a courtly bow before Lalwen, Elemmakil's fluting changes subtly, and while Daeron hurries to match the notes the two Calaquendi waltz as if they were at a grand feast upon the hill of Tuna, where the streets shine with diamond dust and dark trees rise like pillars of basalt. And Enerdhil is crying into Huan's pelt and Dirhaval's voice falters but Elemmakil carries on, on, and Daeron gives up, reverts to the Iathrin style. But he is not the most magic player of the elves for nothing, the symphony continues and Nellas is there again, and here in Brethil of all places Tirion and Menegroth come together by Thingol's minstrel and Gondolin's guard, Finwe's children and a handmaiden from Doriath.

 And there is Dirhaval's voice, trilling, steadying, singing a song he picked up from Eru-knows-where and the folk of Haleth join in, rise to their feet and clasp each other's hands, and Huan yips, tugging Enerdhil up. Enerdhil's tears are hardly notable for everyone's cheeks are wet now, and Daeron pipes and Elemmakil flutes and someone starts on a lute, and in the thick serenity between them Luthien is there, dancing...

 

 They break apart after that. Lalwen has a new light in her eyes, and declares that she is returning to Hithlum. They have travelled far together, or they at least have travelled far, and none tries to stop her. Enerdhil, after a haggard glance at Elemmakil and Celebrimbor, decides to accompany her. Celebrimbor accepts it, difficultly, and hugs them both. He and Elemmakil are continuing south, Dirhaval with them. Daeron turns to look for Nellas, but instead of finding her , he feels a feather-light kiss on his forehead and Nellas is gone, spirit of the forest she is.

 Daeron clasps Dirhaval on the shoulder, and shakes hands with everyone else. Dirhaval seems to realize that Daeron does not intend to come with them. He lets out a hiccupping sob and plows into Daeron's embrace, their grievances forgotten for the moment.

 'I don't think I'll ever sing again,' Dirhaval says. Daeron hushes him, mumbling something about mortal flames burning brighter but all he can think of is _Gods, I am so proud of you._

 Celebrimbor offers to take Huan with him, but it is old, would slow them down. Neither can it go with Lalwen and Enerdhil; they are striding toward certain death. And so Daeron puts a hand on its scruff and watches the others say goodbye, and leave. He looks up, checks Vasa's position. Then he slowly begins to walk east.

 

 

 

_...and passing over the mountains he came into the East of Middle-Earth, where for many ages he made lament beside dark waters for Luthien, daughter of Thingol, most beautiful of all living things._

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happened when, trying to deny the reality of having Mid-term exams next week, I read Station Eleven (by Emily St. John Mandel) while simultaneously chatting over Twitter about Tolkien. I'm sorry!
> 
> One day I will sit down and write a proper fic. I swear. But it is not this day...
> 
>  
> 
> Dirhaval is the man from the House of Hador who wrote Narn i chin Hurin, the lay of the children of Hurin. Narn is a poem that is meant to be read aloud, not put to song. As for the other people, I felt bad for Daeron, curious as to what happened to Irime, Nellas, and Elemmakil, and still a bit miffed about WHERE THE HELL CELEBRIMBOR WAS. As for the dog... I wanted a dog named Huan, so shoot me.
> 
> Some of the descriptions of Tirion came from what I remember from Tolkien's poem 'Kor - in a city lost and dead' (or something like it; I don't even remember the title clearly). The quotes at the top and the bottom are from the Silmarillion.
> 
> For Celebrimbor I chose to go with the version of canon that says he was a smith of Gondolin. I usually go along with the idea that he was one of those soldiers from Nargothrond at the Nirnaeth, and was swept up by Turgon in its aftermath.
> 
> Nellas probably shouldn't be degraded as a handmaiden; she was one, yes, but she was Melian's handmaiden and I think that should matter.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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